47 killed in mosque bombing

MOSUL, Iraq -- A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shiite mosque during a funeral Thursday, killing 47 people, an attack that came as Iraq's main Shiite party and a Kurdish bloc said they reached a deal that sets the stage for a new government to be formed.\nU.S. troops cordoned off the northeastern Tameem neighborhood near the mosque, a poor area of the city crowded with many homes. Civilian vehicles helped ambulance crews in ferrying casualties to hospitals.\n"As we were inside the mosque, we saw a ball of fire and heard a huge explosion," said Tahir Abdullah Sultan, 45. "After that blood and pieces of flesh were scattered around the place," he added.\nRows of overturned white plastic chairs were stained in blood. Body parts, believed to be of the bomber, were spread around the area, and the smell of gunpowder filled the yard. Windows of nearby cars were shattered.\n"After the cloud of smoke and dust dispersed, we saw the scattered bodies of the fallen and smelled gunpowder," said Adnan al-Bayati, another witness.\nAt least 47 people were killed and more than 90 wounded, said Dr. Saher Maher, speaking from a hospital in the city. He said U.S. troops took 10 "very critical" patients to a military medical facility at their base in the city.\nThe U.S. military unit that controls the area could not immediately be reached for comment.\nThe deal between the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance and a Kurdish coalition will allow a new government to be named when the National Assembly opens next week.\nIt calls for the government to begin discussion on the return of about 100,000 Kurds to the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk and talks about redrawing existing Kurdish regions to include the city in Iraq's new constitution.\nIt also gives the Kurds just one major Cabinet post in return for making one of their leaders, Jalal Talabani, Iraq's first-ever Kurdish president. One ministry will go to the country's Sunni Arab minority, which largely stayed away from the Jan. 30 elections.\nThe Kurds agreed to back conservative Islamic Dawa Party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari for prime minister.\nAny land agreement will be incorporated into the country's new constitution, which must be drafted by mid-August and approved by referendum two months later.\n"As for Kirkuk, we agreed to solve the issue in two steps. In the first step, the new government is committed to normalizing the situation in Kirkuk, the other step regarding annexing Kirkuk to Kurdistan is to be left until the writing of the constitution," said Fuad Masoum, a member of the Kurdish coalition, who served as head of the Iraq's former National Council.\nHe added that the new government "is obligated to normalization in Kirkuk, the return of deported Kurds to their main areas (in) Kirkuk."\nA ranking member of the alliance who has participated in negotiations with the Kurds, held in Baghdad, said the government that will be formed after the National Assembly convenes Wednesday will deal with both issues.\n"We agreed with the Kurds that these two issues are to be solved through the government and they agreed on this. ... We told them that the issues will be discussed as soon as the central government is formed," said Ali al-Dabagh, a member of the Shiite Political Council.\nKurdish demands include an autonomous Kurdistan as part of federal Iraq and a share of region's oil revenues. They also want to maintain their peshmerga militia and want a bigger share of the national budget, more than the 17 percent they now receive.\nTheir demand for a federal state requires redrawing their state borders to include Kurdish areas.\nThey also want reversal of what they call the "Arabization" of areas such as Kirkuk. Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein relocated Iraqi Arabs to the region in a bid to secure the oil fields there.